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Hey folks,

I'm currently looking for a company to use for credit card processing for PostTask.com, and having a hard time finding one. My requirement is that they provide a Web API and accept businesses located in Germany.

I identified and contacted several providers already, but either they have not responded or send me back a PDF telling me how their "HTML API" is working (yes, forms with hidden input fields *sigh*). So if you have any experiences or information you could share with me, that'd be much appriciated. In order to tell spam and legitimate comments apart, please contact me at: felix@thinkingphp.org.

Thanks a lot,
-- Felix Geisendörfer aka the_undefined

PS: If you want an invite for posttask.com, feel free to email me as well.

Hey Felix,
I've worked with http://www.authorize.net before and they have a fairly simple PHP API to work with. They seem to tout the word 'international' around the site, but I couldn't find anything too specific about it. Hope that helps, good luck with the search!

Besides that I’d rather have the money in my bank account then in PayPal after I receive it …

Felix, I believe that even with most online merchants/gateways, the money is held by them for a short period of time and also hold a certain percentage for 180 days. PayPal doesn't do that, but again, I don't know how they work in Germany but I used to directly cash out from my paypal atm card.

I am currently using Beanstream.com services, but I don't really know how good they are for Germany, might want to check them out. When processing big amounts, it's always better NOT to be with PayPal unless you want to make withdrawals every day - they tend to suspend accounts for no reason when you accumulate funds in them - I had a first hand experience with over 30k and after processing over 10k transactions in 4 years, so definitely not an 'unverified' account ;)

One last note: send an invite my way if you can, I'd love to see your project and who knows, can it make me move from Basecamp where I hate the owners and their disgusting support level but love the app?

[...] Felix GeisendÃ¶rfer created an interesting post today on Credit card processors in Germany / Europe?.Here’s a short outline:I’m currently looking for a company to use for credit card processing for PostTask.com, and having a hard time finding one. My requirement is that they provide a Web API and accept businesses located in Germany. … [...]

Jad: I sent you an invite. Yeah all the bad stories I hard about PayPal made me really re-consider using them. But since they don't even offer their service in Germany its a no-brainer. I just sent you an invite and would love to hear you're feedback. However, PostTask.com is not a Basecamp competitor at this point, its all about private task / time management. Project management however is one of the problems we're interested in solving later on as well ; ).

Hey Felix,
You can look at http://www.2checkout.com I know they are international but i haven't worked with them ( a friend is adding them to his paypal-only site)

I don't know about APIs but i wouldnt count on much. Most companies take the 'safe' approach. I don't blame them - i don't want to even know the cc numbers of my users :)

P.S. send me an invite if you can :)

Christian said
on Nov 11, 2007:

Hello,
why not use a german company ? I have worked with ipayment.de some times, it can be integrated into your site in the background easily. (The company belongs to 1&1 group). However you still need a contract with a bank. We had good experience with Postbank.

Christian: I'm not using iPayment because to me they are just a "middle-man" and I want to cut out the middle man. I might have to use them, but I'd move rather work with a bank or company directly that can provide me with the full service. But I'm having a hard time finding a company / bank in Germany matching this criteria.

Felix, I checked and you are right: DirectPayment API is available only in the US and UK.

I hope you find a suitable solution.

(I'd also love to be able to take a glimpse at what you're working on with PostTask.)

Christian said
on Nov 12, 2007:

Hello Felix,
the point might be that the company in question must have a banking licence to do this service - at least in the EU. And the banks don't seem to be interested to handle these transactions by themselves. Paypal is a good example: the do have a banking licence now. (But i still would not use them for business).

Paul Hanson said
on Feb 25, 2009:

Hi Felix,

I used a long time to find the right Payment provider, but after a long time I found www.soeasypay.com

They have supplied me with a great API and they have a good service.

All the Best
/P

Paul Hanson said
on Feb 25, 2009:

Sorry, just wanted to add after I read more of the tread in about this, that www.soeasypay.com is for my merchant account using Deutsche Bank as processing Bank and they approve clients/merchants all over the world

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